01.

In life, there were two types of idiots: the really smart idiot and the idiot that was a complete nut.

Yongguk was an idiot. In fact, he was the second type of idiot, the crazy one that would make you want to slowly back away in hopes that they didn’t see you. He was the exact sort of imbecile that you’d want to make sure was locked up nice and safe in homes and rooms for the sanity of both himself and the general human race, just incase his stupid was contagious.

He was that stupid.

An idiot; that was the only thing I could call him as, because that was exactly what he was.

The day I’d first met the said idiot, the imbecile, was in middle school.

I was a fine young adult, reared straight and proper, ranking fairly high in classes and loved by the majority of the grade. It was around that time when both the seductive lures of puberty and the world’s greatest idiot hit me at the same blast time.

First year middle school (ie. seventh grade) was when I first saw him with his tunnel deep voice and addictive smile. He’d knocked me clear off my feet. Literately.

It was during the school wide sporting festival when I’d run into him. A class soccer tournament and I was my class’s striker, swift and cunning. Everyone was depending on me to win them to victory - the prize being give or take twelve boxes of large sized pizza - when he ran straight into me, sending me flying a few feet back and onto the artificial grass with a muscle bound him fallen over me.

So yes, he’d knocked me straight off my feet, just not exactly in the ways you’d imagine.

With a yellow card shoved into his face, we were pulled apart, me back onto the benches to treat a sprained ankle and him onto the field, an apologetic smile being shined my way.

That was the beginning to my smile obsession.

Yongguk had a stupid smile. Unlike the others, mine or my classmates’, his smile consisted more of pink than white. Frankly, it was almost scary. I’d never realized that a smile could be so filled with gum. Was it even possible for that much gum to show when you smiled?

Second year into my new middle school career was when I next ran into the smiling idiot. Entering into my new classroom, I’d recognized him immediately as the smiling buffoon from the soccer match a year back. What was his name? Yonggup? Yongjae?

“Wassup? My name’s Yongguk.”

Ah yes, that’s right, Bang Yongguk, the idiot striker with the creepy smile from class 1-4.

It had never once before then crossed my mind that I could possibly one day be friends with this imbecile. He was an idiot, of the stupid world, while I was graced to sit on the clouds and high thrones of the world.

And you know, I still blame him for pulling me down into hell.

We became the best of friends come follow that second year. Wherever I was, he wasn’t too far away; the same vise versa. People, especially teachers, began to joke that the two of us were attached at the hip by an invisible string, that tearing us apart would sooner mean our death. They called him my soul mate.

And funny enough, I never complained.

“And would you believe the nerve of that guy?”

Eventually, it became a daily habit of mine to tell pointless stories of my day to Yongguk, all in the sad hopes that I’d get to see that stupid smile of his. As stupid as it was, it was far too addictive to pass. It was so stupid, that I’d come to fall in love with it. That’s how stupid it was.

It wasn’t hard to make Yongguk smile. A simple glance his way, or even turning the other way, would be enough to erupt a wide smile on his stupid face. But there was a difference in his smiles, small and minute, but something only I could make out.

There was his I’m-sorry smile; it was reserved for his confused moments, where he’d smile just for the lack of things to say. You’re-weird smiles were of when he wanted out of a conversation, but was too polite to back down. His smiles were of much various and never ending, but of them all, my favorite had to be his dorky smile. Of them, it was the single rarest smile, that appeared only when he was truly the happiest. The one that only came out for me.

Over the years, I caught myself doing stupid things to see that smile. I’d run his direction every day, tossing my arms around his neck and nudging him playfully in the side upon his arrival. During lunch, I’d share my dessert and pass him my share of meat, lying that I wasn’t really hungry. It was the little things that made him smile that precious smile.

It came to be that I didn’t care what I had to bring back that particular smile to his lips; I was his best friend after all, I’d do anything.

Then, one day, I wasn’t the only one bringing that stupid look to his face. Jealous? Maybe just a little.

Her name was Song Jieun, the school’s model student. With long, flowing brown hair - natural, she claimed, bull , I read - falling just over her shoulders and wide chocolatey eyes that you could near possibly melt in; she was, for sure, quite the looker.

The end of eighth grade, was when they began dating, shooting each other gross lovey dovey eyes that made me want to barf everything stored in my stomach and more.

At first, I’d suspected it to be just a phase. Yongguk would get back to his mind, his stupid mind, and come back to my side. So at first, I let him be, smiling in congrads and bidding him a safe relationship. And for whenever that said relationship broke, I’d be there, ready to catch him and pick up the pieces one by one.

But that day never came.

It was during their dating period that my uality came to strike me clear in the face. So maybe I wasn't as straight and proper as I’d pulled myself out to be. My straight was just about as much as a well cooked noodle.

Watching Yongguk and Jieun together made me hurt. It was like taking a screw driver and stabbing it just over my left chest, twisting and shoving just so often that the wound would never be able to heal. As painful as it was though, I’d never say a word; I wasn’t about to beg.

Come our third and final year of middle school, the BangSong couple seemed to grow even closer, if that was at all possible. At every and all points of the day, they seemed to be touching somewhere, whether this be their lips - smooshed together in a desperate kiss stolen seconds before a teacher arrived - or their hands (or anywhere else for that matter, ual innuendos fully intended). It began to grow disturbing then, when their lip locks grew deeper and more intimate. Like in the movies that consisted more of skin than clothes, the same ones that parents wanted their children to stay clear away from.

Then one day, sometime during high school, Jieun began throwing the biggest of fits, once warm brown eyes sharp and demanding. She became an everyday copy of me in the mornings when woken too early. And at first, of what I passed of as her time-of-the-month, grew longer and more vicious.

That hour or two of her womanly fit soon grew out. A day. Two days. A week. Eventually, it’d dragged out through a lengthy month and had grown out to two months. Yet still, the sweet little Song Jieun we used to know wasn’t back to smile and lecture us on about nothing. It came to the point that I actually missed her nagging at me to help clean the classrooms after school.

And when I’d asked her if she’d gained any weight … … I’d almost lost my face.

Not too long after that, she disappeared.

Here one day and gone the next.

At first, nobody really gave it a damn. Maybe she was just sick, down with the common flu. Or perhaps, her family had gone on an unsuspected field trip across the world - it wasn’t uncommon in wealthy families such as hers. It had never occurred to a single one of us, that something could have actually been wrong.

Come the following months she didn’t arrive, the teachers refusing to give away any information other than the fact that she had dropped out, we (we being the little circle that had gathered solely because of the BangSong relationship) began to worry.

Hyosung and I (the closest to Jieun and Yongguk respectively) had tried to pry the information out of my usually gummy friend; but his lips remained sealed. No longer was that lovely smile there, greeting my days or smoothing the hell out of the school’s now missing model student. No one knew what was going on.

We tried to brush it off. If Yongguk hadn’t totally gone psycho by then, the problem couldn’t have been too bad. In weeks, Yongguk had begun to smile again; and shamelessly, I forgot all about Jieun.

The middle of tenth grade was when Yongguk stopped showing face in class. Just like Jieun, he seemed to have disappeared from the very surface of the world. It was as if the two had very before existed.

Talk about the couple was forbidden within school gates, an unspoken rule around our small mock-campus area. Still, that didn’t stop the oral whispers of rumours had passed throughout school; no matter how hard the teachers tried to stop it, they couldn’t stop childish gossip of high school students.

There were some of the more ridiculous rumours.

One read that Jieun was actually the child of the mafia head, that her father had found out about her relationship Yongguk and decided to get rid of the poor boy. I tried not to pay mind to that one. I’d met Jieun’s father during school festivals - he certainly had not looked mafia material at all.

Another one was that Jieun had committed suicide and that Yongguk followed. This made even less sense, seeing as the police hadn’t come in to investigate her closest friends. When Hyosung shook her head at this one, I knew too well to disregard it as well.

Then, there was the pregnancy rumour. This one was the one that I had too hurriedly cast aside as just a rumor. There was no way that the infamous class president, Song Jieun, would go and get shacked off like that. It just wasn’t possible.

Little did I know.

Just like that though, life rolled on, with or without the two used-to-be-lovebirds. I learned to live my life without seeing that pink and white smile, falling both in and out of love quickly with a number of friends on both sides of genders. I learned that life didn’t solely revolve around trying to make a certain Bang Yongguk smile.

And for four long years, I forgot that a Bang Yongguk existed.

“One Americano please, venti.”

Over lengthy years, I’d gone from a golden student to a delinquent and then back again to every mother’s dream child. It was easy to say that my sudden changes of personalities had at a point thrown my parents off, making it hard for them to determine whether or not they wanted to scold me for it or not.

But if there was one thing about that had never changed, and never will change, since day one of my schooling career, it was my obsession and addiction to caffeine.

Without making little tally marks on my handbook, as suggested by my counselor (worried about my overdose of the stuff), I knew too well that I’d already gone over my daily recommended dose of the bitter drink. Mind you, I would have given up drinking coffee a long time ago if I could - I knew how hazardous it was to my health, after all - but coffee wasn’t quite so easy to quit.

I would have liked to compare it to smoking, only less foul.

That was why I had gone over across town to get my coffee that day, so that the barista wouldn’t give me funky looks for having showed up over five times in that single day (it’d come to the point that even the part timer would laugh and deny me of my daily overdose). It was because of my stupid counselor and his decision to warn the campus workers of my habits that changed everything of my usual peaceful day.

“That’ll be five thousand four hundred won.”

Hearing that voice, the first time in over four long years, was almost like having a brick thrown straight in the gut. It wasn’t the type of voice that you could so easily forget, judging how abnormal it was in the people around this area. Even after a hundred years, I still would have recognized his voice.

My first reaction was to drop the card I was fetching from my wallet.

Next, was to blink up and drop my jaws with the card.

In the past, a bunch of my friends and I would stay up late in coffee shops studying and doing group projects assigned for class. We’d often play a competitive game of rock-paper-scissors to determine who’d pay for the coffee (the loser usually being me).

But who would have thought back then, that one day, I’d find the tables turned? That one day, it would be him serving me my coffee?

The irony in the situation almost made me laugh.

Going through several cups of coffee, I waited it out until he got on break, ignoring the fact that my meeting with the counselor had arrived and gone (leaving behind in its wake a hurricane of phone calls, those of which I’d all so gracefully ignored). It was only after he’d ducked out from the counters that I stood up, waving him over to where I sat, smiling thankfully to the refill of coffee.

“, I haven’t seen you in forever!”

I didn’t bother try and hide my past concern for him, how the others in school had thought that the CSI had abducted him for his twenty third dimensional way of thinking. And for a while, we just laughed, bringing up and recalling our more years back in grade school.

“Why’d you go off and disappear on us anyways?”

He didn’t hide anything. It was then the exhaust in his facial features and voice that strained through my excitement to see him showed. All the sudden, Yongguk looked at least ten years older than he had just five minutes ago. He wasn’t just my silly seventeen year old friend anymore.

Yongguk had become many things in the years I’d missed him. He had become a man, a part timer, a traitor; but most importantly, he was a father.

The dark bags, dug deep and thick, under his eyes showed just how exhausting work was for him. The way his face seemed tight against his cheek bones and how his jaw line showed a little too clearly against once soft features read a story unimaginable.

And yet, his smile never once fell off his lips once his stories began.

“Here, look at this. He drew me this just the other day from his daycare. He’s grown up just so fast. It feels just like yesterday that he couldn’t even hold his head up properly.”

This must have been what they called a father’s smile.

My trips to that certain coffee shop became more often. I’d walk in, balancing my bag on one shoulder lazily. Sitting by the window seat closest to the counters, I’d wait until Yongguk’s shift ended before starting off our rambles where we’d last left off.

Within just three weeks, we’d managed to fill each other in on the four years that we’d spent missing from each other’s lives. The vivid look in Yongguk’s eyes as he explained his years as a father made it almost feel as if I had been there right next to him the whole way through.

It’s on the fourth week, that I finally get to meet the apple of Yongguk’s eyes.

And his name was Junhong.

He was tiny, smaller than other kids his age, feet unable to reach the ground, as he sat in the seat I usually occupied, busy scribbling on a dry piece of napkin from the counter. Deep brown hair fluffed on his head, falling just over the tell-tale chocolate brown eyes, it was only obvious to tell who the mother of this sweetest child had been.

And the father, he was the man who watched with the brightest shine to his eyes from across the counter.

Yongguk was fired later that day, I found out the very day after, going to the store and unable to find that usual clumsy fool and his pink and white smile. The manager had thought he and his baby boy caused too much troubles for the customers. Children that young were not allowed to be left unattended and Yongguk was far too busy to take care of him while managing orders.

That had been his only job left, from the three he’d already lost that week.

The rest of that week, I spent on seeking out a tiny five year old kid and his dad, looking like an absolute fool in asking around in the stores I knew Yongguk used to work at. The next week had been spent going to any store with a hiring sign to call if they found such a man.

I was just worried.

My counselor, Jo Kyuhyun (or just hyung, as he insisted), began to take notice of the weird twitch in my eye whenever I as much as remotely saw a kid around Yongguk’s kid’s age. It was either that I desperately needed to get laid (which, I honestly wouldn’t disagree to) or there was something deathly wrong going on.

Kyuhyun tried to pry whatever was wrong out of me. He tried with simple methods at first, attempting to trick me out of answering his silly questions that were completely off mark.

“That kid looks like he’s around five, doesn’t he?”

I nodded dully, slipping on the glass of milk (milk, not coffee) Kyuhyun had bought for me. Apparently, I was banned off of my caffeine and it was greatly affecting my usually upped personality.

“Did you … … You know you can tell me anything, right Himchan?”

My automatic reaction, despite my exhausting symptoms of caffeine withdrawal, was to kick him in the shin under the table with wild eyes. “I don’t have a kid hyung!” Did he seriously think I was looking for my kid?

His smile was sheepish as he waved his hands innocently in front of him. He was anything but innocent; Kyuhyun should just cut out the pure crap he was trying to give off. I’d heard more than enough around campus to know that he was just as much a cunning mastermind as my younger cousin Jiho was and still is.

But despite that, I still never did tell him directly what was wrong.

I had no right in naming Yongguk in my problems.

“So, let’s just say that I had a kid.” The look in his eyes was almost funny. “I don’t, I’m serious about that. I’m just about as straight you are, so shut up and listen.” He kicked me back for that one, complaining something about showing respect to my elders. “Let’s just say, hypothetically, a friend had a kid. And this kid was from an accidental experiment from say high school.”

“What grade?”

I rolled my eyes. Was this really that important? “Tenth, let’s say tenth grade. Can I continue?” He nodded and so I did. “So said friend dropped out of school and disappeared for four years. And then reappeared recently, but running several part time jobs, but between three and nine. Why’s this? Why not after three?”

Kyuhyun put a finger to his lip for a second, thinking my hypothetical scenario through. His long nails clanked against the material of his mug before he shrugged, lacing his fingers together professionally on the counter with a smile. “Well, three o’clock is when the daycare lets out. Maybe he needs to pick up his kid.”

“But why does he work night shifts then?”

“He could need the money.”

“Where’s Jieu- I mean, couldn’t the mom pick up their kid then?”

Here’s when the smile fell from Kyuhyun’s lips, his expression turning grim. He only ever really looked like this before telling a story he didn’t really enjoy telling. This was exactly how he looked before telling me that I wasn’t allowed to drink coffee to solve my stress problems anymore.

“You said the kid came in tenth grade. The girl’s parents could have not wanted the kid. It’s not uncommon for parents to oppose of premature pregnancy, so maybe the girl’s parents didn’t want their daughter to be associated with her child and your friend, your hypothetical friend, was too stubborn to let the kid be put up for adoption.”

I chewed over Kyuhyun’s words for the rest of the night.

Jieun’s parents were, true, strict; but were they as heartless as to want to put a sweet child like Junhong up for adoption? Would Jieun have even allowed for something like that to happen?

My head heart and I decided to stop thinking.

I had a musical composition midterm the next day and at this rate, I would never be able to study properly for the exam.

a/n: one chapter per week until i finish writing (and or run out of chapters). this is a rewrite from something i plotted almost a full year ago during my chinese final (failed that ). i finished chapter two just now. and i'm still working off of what used to be chapter one. so much detail i missed out on the first time around.